Eric Musselman tweeted this today and I thought it worth mentioning. It is a great quote by Frank Leahy, who led Notre Dame to four national championships in the 1940s:“Superstars don't know how or why they do things right so easily. They are spoiled by how easy it is and impatient with those to whom it does not come easy, so they seldom make great coaches. The men who become coaches understand that most players must sweat and sacrifice for success and that the success of the team depends on the plodders as much as on the rare superstar.”
I believe it is imperative that you make sure the "plodders" know how special they really are and how important they are to the success of the team. It is also necessary to point this out as much as possible to the "superstars."
A quick example would be that at LSU we utilize motion offense and a big part of our offensive success is screening. Now you don't get the lead headling in the newspaper the next day by leading the Lady Tigers in screens, but it's a huge part of players like Allison Hightower, Quianna Chaney, Seimone Augustus and Marie Ferdinand leading our team in scoring. One thing we do is that we keep a chart on screens set and screens that lead to scores. We make a big deal out of it with our team. We point it out after ever game. When we want practice, we will make sure there are clips of great screens. We will shot that clp a couple of times and talk about the great angle of the screen, how the screener sprinted to the defense, and how it was the screen that got us the shot. We have created a culture at LSU to recognize "plodders" as critically important to our success. Our players will point to a screener after a score like some teams point to a passer. Seimone always mentioned screeners in the post-game press conference. One year, Wendlyn Jones got on the computer and made some business cards: Wendlyn Jones, Professional Screener."
Make the "plodders," the "superstars," the media and your fans know how important these roles are to your success.
